Rape and the Female Subject in Aphra Behn's "The Rover" Author(s): Anita Pacheco Reviewed work(s): Source: ELH, Vol. 65, No. 2 (Summer, 1998), pp. 323-345 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30030182 . Accessed: 04/11/2012 09:06 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to ELH. http://www.jstor.org RAPE AND THE FEMALE SUBJECT IN APHRA BEHN'S THE ROVER BY ANITA PACHECO Critics have often remarkedthat in Aphra Behn's The Rover, ladies ladies.' act like whores and whores like On this level, the play presents a dramaticworld dominatedby the two principalpatriarchal definitions of women, but in which the boundary separating one category from the other has become blurred. In the case of both Florinda, the play's quintessential"maid of quality,"and the prostituteAngellica Bianca, the role reversals arise out of contrasting bids to move from subjection into subjectivity. It is Florinda's rebellion against the commodification of forced marriagethat destabilizes her position within patriarchy,while Angellica Bianca'sself-construction as Petrarchanmistress charts the attempt of a woman excluded from the marital marketplace to turn her beauty into an alternative form of power. This essay will examine the central role which rape plays in both these strugglesto escape patriar- chal devaluation. Before the obligatoryhappy ending, Florinda faces three attempted rapes that are called not rape, but seduction, retalia- tion, or "rufflinga harlot"(228); in presumingto make her own sexual choices, she enters a world where the word "rape"has no meaning. Angellica Bianca's subject position is shown to involve a complex complicityin the same culturallegitimation of male sexual aggression. This paper will suggest that the presence of rape in the experiences of these two charactersworks to interrogate and problematize different modes of female subjectivityby situating them within a patriarchal dramaticworld in which the psychologyof rape is endemic.2 Rebellion against forced marriage is, of course, an age-old comic theme; but the terms in which Florinda articulates her defiance of paternalauthority-her condemnationof the "ill customs"which make a woman the "slave"of her male relations (160)-presents this comic motif as a clash between the absolutistconcept of marriage,in which women function as "objectsof exchange and the guaranteeof dynastic continuity,"and the liberal concept, which invests them with the ELH 65 (1998) 323-345 © 1998 by The Johns Hopkins University Press 323 autonomous subject's right to choose.3 However, the relationship be- tween these two ideas of marriage during the early modern period was not one of simple opposition. The consensus view of marriage as an affective union may have led to general disapproval of aristocratic arranged marriage, but the woman's allotted role within the companion- ate ideal modified without seriously challenging patriarchal interests. If she was granted authority as "joint governor" of the household, she remained subject to her husband; and if she was dignified by her position at the center of the family, she was also confined to that domestic space.4 Women's essential inequality in the liberal model of marriage seems to have extended as well to their right to choose their partners. That freedom appears to have been granted more readily to men than to women, who had to make do, as Mary Astell complained in 1706, with the right of veto: "a woman, indeed, can't properly be said to choose, all that is allowed her is to refuse or accept what is offered.'"5 The liberal concept of marriage, therefore, offered women at best a tentative entry into the order of subjectivity. The history of Early Modem rape law reveals a similarly uncertain transition from patriarchal to liberal attitudes towards women. While medieval rape law perceived rape as a crime against male-owned property, the legal focus shifted in the late sixteenth century from property to person. It was the female victim rather than her male relations who was the injured party in a case of rape, and the crime itself came to be seen not as a property violation but as the ravishment of a woman against her will.6 However, when it came to the law's practical application, it appears that patriarchal definitions of rape continued to hold sway. The evi- dence, admittedly, is immensely difficult to interpret; but Nazife Bashar, in her study of the records of the home counties Assizes from 1558 to 1700, detects a pattern of few prosecutions and a tendency to convict only when the victim was a young girl.' Given that the women who brought rape charges before the Assizes generally belonged to the lower classes, Bashar's findings suggest a disinclination to take rape seriously unless it was seen to involve a grave property offense, such as the rape of man's virgin daughter.8 In the realm of sexuality and marriage, therefore, there was only a limited conceptual space available during the Early Modem period for female self-determination. In the opening scene of The Rover, Behn exhibits the contradictory female identity which this uncertainty gener- ated, as Florinda seeks to define her independence in the very patriarchal terms that invalidate it: "I shall let him see, I understand better what's due 324 Rape and the Female Subjectin The Rover to my beauty, birth and fortune, and more to my soul, than to obey those unjust commands" (159). Florinda here asserts a value that precludes her being reduced to a mere object of exchange by her male relations, eager to establish a kinship alliance with a wealthy old man. She bases her claim to value not only on the accidents of beauty and high birth, but also on essence; the claim to possess a rational soul-a prominent argument in seventeenth-century proto-feminist writing borrowed from philosophical rationalism-entails a demand to be treated as a fully human subject rather than as the "slave"of patriarchal fiat. 9 However, the properties which sustain Florinda's status as an autono- mous subject free to choose her own marriage partner are largely those for which her father and brother cherish her: it is her beauty, rank and fortune that make her such a prized asset on the marriage market. Even Florinda's conviction of a spiritual center that makes her more than a saleable body may smack less of early feminist thought than of class pride, insofar as aristocratic ideology always justified class power by appeals to essential superiority. And when Florinda defends Belvile against Pedro's suspicions, she introduces a final and crucial component of her value, at once a corporeal property and one surrounded with a powerful spiritual mystique: during the siege of Pamplona, Belvile "threw himself into all dangers" to preserve her honor (161). On one level, Florinda's attack on patriarchal compulsion points to the internal contradictions which work to destabilize ideologies of gender. Florinda is a beautiful and wealthy upper-class virgin, possessed of the cluster of class and gender attributes that make her, in this hierarchical masculine order, the most highly prized of women. At the same time, she is degraded to the level of an object, a commodity, however precious, in a coercive structure of exchange. The tension between these exalted and reductive valuations opens a space for rebellion and a bid for self-determination, for Florinda's pride in her self-worth clearly chafes at the exploitation involved in forced marriage. At the same time, however, the scene makes it clear that Florinda remains inscribed within male discourse. Because her self-esteem derives entirely from her status as a lady, she is able to measure her human value only by patriarchal standards. This contradiction in her self-conception becomes especially apparent in her attitude towards sexuality, which combines the determination to secure her own amorous choice with a chaste shrinking from the reality of female desire. In the opening scene, before the appearance of her brother Pedro, Florinda does not hesitate to do his sexual policing for him, reproaching their sister Hellena's curiosity about the erotic realm as unseemly wildness in Anita Pacheco 325 a young woman destined for a nunnery.When it comes to her relation- ship with Belvile, Florinda avoids acknowledgingher own sexual im- pulses by recoding their passion into a narrativeof chivalriccourtesy and nobility.In a later scene, she claims that her attachmentto Belvile stems not from an unstable physicalinfatuation but from knowledge of his "merit"(190). Significantly,Belvile demonstratedthat merit in the classic chivalricscenario of the knight'sdefense of imperiled virginity: whenI was exposedto suchdangers as the licensedlust of commonsoldiers threatened, whenrage and conquest flew through the city- then Belvile,this criminal,for my sake, threwhimself into all dangersto savemy honour.(161) Florinda offers this story as evidence of Belvile's aristocratichigh- mindedness; but we may also detect the strong sexual subtext in this miniaturechivalric romance, involving the hero'sdetermination to oust his rivalsand claim exclusivepossession of the object of desire.10 This passage also introduces us to several key aspects of the play's exploration of rape. Although Florinda speaks of rape here as an unfortunateby-product of male lust (which is all the more unsavoryin that it issues from low-classmen), her account of the fall of Pamplona complicatesthis simple definition,identifying rape as an integralcompo- nent of war and therefore as an expressionof male violence and rivalry.